The 89th Academy Awards are set to air Sunday, Feb. 26, beginning at 7 p.m. ET with red carpet coverage and the awards at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.
Movie fans who’ve endured months of trailers and ad campaigns ― and also forgone TV subscriptions ― will have a tougher time, however, tuning in (legally).
Live-streaming through ABC.com and the ABC app is available on iOS and Android devices along with streaming devices including Apple TV, Fire TV and Roku. But you’ve got to have a cable subscription and be geographically situated in select areas: Chicago, Fresno, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco. ABC states that DirecTV subscribers will also be able to access the live-stream in a few cities: Albuquerque, Boston, Ft. Smith/Fayetteville, Jackson (Mississippi), Kansas City, Milwaukee, Monterey-Salinas, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Portland-Auburn (Maine), Savannah and West Palm Beach.
After the awards, the ceremony will be available on ABC.com or the ABC app to viewers within the U.S. in the week afterward ― but, again, you need a cable subscription. (The whole ceremony will be available online regardless of subscription status beginning March 6.)
That leaves out a lot of people.
If you don’t have cable, there are a few ways to catch parts of Hollywood’s biggest night, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, via our old pal, the internet.
Watch the live-stream with a Sling TV or Playstation Vue free trial (or sign up).
Both streaming providers, Sling TV and Playstation Vue, offer free one-week trials and will show the 2017 Oscars. With Sling TV, you still need to live in one of the markets listed above, and ABC access on Playstation Vue is also limited to select markets. (We didn’t make the rules, sorry.)
Tune into an Oscars companion show online.
IMDb is hosting a live companion show that will stream live on IMDb.com, Twitter and Twitch beginning at 8 p.m. ET. The show, which will include unnamed celebrity guests, aims to provide “informative expert commentary to complement and enhance” the actual show. Which you can feel as if you’re watching by obsessively tracking Oscars-related hashtags on Twitter. (Again, sorry.)
Find a bar with TVs.
Go there. Talk to the bartender. Politely ask him or her to change the channel. Voila.
CLARIFICATION: This article has been amended to reflect that you can, if you still want to, watch the Oscars beginning in March on ABC without a TV subscription.
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